But the words won’t come.
Nothing makes sense.
Instead, I focus on the air entering my lungs…then leaving again. Slow. Mechanical. Like breathing is the only thing tethering me to the moment. It’s a damn good thing I have no control over the inevitable beating of my heart. It just keeps going, pounding inside my chest by the mercy of God, or some higher power. Thankfully. Because, if it were up to me, I think it might have stopped the moment she started talking.
There’s a feeling rising inside of me that’s so foreign it almost frightens me. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life.
Immense empathy. That’s the closest word I have for it.
But even that doesn’t do it justice.
Every horrible thing that has happened to this woman. Every ounce of pain her soul has carried alone, I feel it like it’s been poured directly into my own chest.
And somehow…I feel it tenfold.
My chest tightens with the weight of it, with the unbearable need to fix something that can’t be fixed. And all I want, more than anything, is to take it away from her. I don’t want her to carry any of that inside her for one more second.
“What can I do?” God, that sounds pathetic. My voice cracks under the weight of it. “Tell me how to make it better,” I plead quietly. “Tell me how to make it go away.”
Only then do I realize my vision has blurred. Tears feather down my face, slipping silently over my skin, and she looks at me with the most sorrowful expression I’ve ever seen her wear. Like my pain somehow hurts her almost as much as her own.
“Collins.”
Her gaze drops, finding her hands clasped together on her thighs between us, fingers twisting together.
“This isn’t your problem to fix. You didn’t do anything.” Her voice is soft but steady. Like she’s already had this conversation with herself a hundred times before.
“I’ve had ten years to work on myself. To heal.” She swallows, her eyes still fixed on her hands. “And just because the pain still exists in me doesn’t mean he won. He didn’t.”
Her shoulders lift slightly with a quiet breath.
“I’m okay. He made me weak…just for me to grow stronger.” Her words barely rise above a whisper, and yet conviction stands behind every single one of them. A quiet strength that makes my chest ache.
I throw myself toward her, wrapping my arms around every inch of her I can possibly reach. My hands grip her like letting go might somehow shatter her into pieces. Like if I loosen my hold for even a second, everything she’s fought to rebuild might fall apart again.
So I hold on. Tight.
As if it’s my job now to keep every broken piece of her together.
She melts into my arms almost instantly, her body softening against mine like she’s been waiting for somewhere safe to land. For a moment, neither of us moves.
Then something suddenly dawns on me.
I pull my head back just enough to look at her, though I keep her tucked tightly against my chest, one hand still anchored at her back.
“How did you find out that what he said about me—about me and Steph—wasn’t true?”
She sniffles softly and wipes at her eyes before looking up at me. “I just…realized I already knew the truth.” My heart bottoms out in my chest.
“It took a while for me to even try making sense of the things he said that night,” she continues quietly. “But when I finally did, it wasn’t even a question for me.” Her eyes hold mine now, steady and certain.
“I knew who you were. I knew what we had. You wouldn’t have done that to me.” Her voice trembles slightly, but the certainty in it never wavers. “I don’t know what he had to gain from lying. Maybe just manipulation, I guess. But his words didn’t hold any weight.”
She shakes her head faintly.
“What we had was real. You can’t fake the kind of connection we had.”
Relief crashes through me the moment the words leave her mouth, flooding every corner of my chest.
